At the same time, I bet the run game's been safely tucked under the Veil of Secrecy. Wouldn't want to divulge too much information about all of our three running plays.

I guess if we really want to know how our run game is structured, we'll just have to refer to Clemson's spring practice videos. After all, they run the same offense we do, but Dabo's a hick and doesn't know enough to hide his cards.

But going by his track record, I’m not sure if that’s a good sign or not. He and Swarbrick felt great about where the program was heading into 2016. There was also a great feeling prior to 2013 before taking steps back in the next two years. And his confidence in his qb is inversely related to team success.

That having been said, in fall camp he said there were a lot of concerns and it would show often.

The team had the talent to win 9 games at least by the way. I wouldn't say they were overly optimistic though

they all...

It was never going to happen, but he hoped it would.

Couple that with Watkins getting shut down in fall camp, Crawford going down for the year in game 2, a mess at quarterback, poor defensive recruiting, and BVG and it's not a surprise that season spiraled.

The next season the team went 10-3 and ran the ball down teams' throats. Other than BVG, the other points that you cite as contributing to the spiral were not particularly significant in light of the success of the 2016 team, which featured significantly worse quarterback play.

Kelly's mismanagement of the team in 2016 appears to be a far greater influence than the other cumulative factors, apart from BVG's presence. And even that only lasted half of the year. And the team still looked like shit even after he left when it got a defensive performance that wasn't much different than the performance in the full 2017 season.

That we lost 8 games that year is all on the coaches, and is easily the worst coaching job in major college football of the last 30 years.

in 2007 we lost to Navy, weren't competitive against Air Force, and had to squeak by a pretty bad Stanford team. Most of our games were just a comedy of errors and the team was unprepared to play. We had one system that was installed all summer long that was thrown out after a half of football, we had a defensive coordinator woefully unable to do his job, and we had a head coach that had no idea how to get the team ready for the season.

That is the worst coaching job I've ever seen in a major college program. 2016 was bad as well

the 2007 team was almost devoid of upperclassemen thanks to Ty's complete lack of recruiting for 2 years. Kelly didn't have that built-in excuse (which I think was actually a legimitate reason, given how few players were signed).

On the other hand, I do believe that if Weis approached 2007 with Sharpley at starting QB with his base offense (whatever the hell it was) and just let the team take its lumps, we could have squeeked out with a couple more wins.

4 or so wins.

Brown was just so unprepared and incompetent, but at least he had the excuse of being new to the job. BVG is just awful.

Probably a push, but both jobs were awful.

It was more embarrassing than '07. At least that year the recruiting crater could be seen.

the last four years would have a good chance at going 12-0 against a schedule like that. Ironically, there were a good number of players on the 2016 team that were part of the other teams' success.

I know Swarbrick waxed on about how great of a position the program was in. I certainly didn't pick up on it at the time if Kelly sounded less optimistic than usual.